Known (29 page)

Sounds and images cluttered her brain, and she fought to stay focused.

He never talked to me.

Or did he?
Her brain leaped from memory to memory as she tried to recall every time she’d talked with an older man.

Would he have reached out to her? In some obscure way?

“I’m so sorry, Gianna. This is horrible news. It must be like losing him twice.”

Yes, yes it is.

She’d already grieved her father once. Now she had to do it again?

Mom?
Her knees shook.

“Your mother—” said Lacey.

“My mother . . . is she . . . oh, my God, Lacey. I don’t know what to think now.” She rubbed her temple, her brain spinning around thoughts of her mother.
Is my mother still alive?
Every childhood dream and wish and prayer had been about her parents’ surviving that car accident. That one day they’d knock on her uncle’s door, laughing and saying it’d all been a big mistake. Gianna had learned early on to stop wishing.

Death was final. People don’t come back. No matter how much you love them and miss them. She’d never been the child who lied to her friends and said her parents were traveling or international spies. It’d been tempting to say something like that several times, but she’d never been a liar.

Someone’s been lying to me for years.

Uncle Saul.

Did he know? All of a sudden every word he’d ever said to her felt false. His expression when he’d seen the image of the necklace . . . his words when he talked about her father . . .

Had he hidden the truth from her? Her limbs grew numb.

“I need to go, Lacey.” She struggled to form the words.

“Gianna. Wait. You shouldn’t be alone right now. Is Violet with you?”

“No, Jamie picked her up for the day. I have to go to the police station and back to the ME’s office. I didn’t want her tagging along.”

“Then sit tight. I’ll be right there.”

“I need you to call Becker and Hawes for me. Tell them what you found out, please. I don’t think I can have that conversation right now. I’m fine, but I—”

“I’ll call for you, but you are not
fine
. No one can be fine after getting news like this.”

“My uncle is here in the hotel. I’ll head up to his room.”
We need to talk.
Anger replaced her shock, clearing her mind as she focused on Saul.

“Are you sure? Is that what you want to do?”

“It’s what I need to do, Lacey. If anyone knew my father was alive, it would have been his brother.”

“How could they have hidden this from you?”

“That’s what I plan to find out.”

The door to Gianna’s suite opened as Chris raised his fist to knock.

Gianna looked ready to strangle someone. Anger flushed her face, and he stumbled back a half step.

“What happened?” he asked, alarm pulsating through his veins.

“The man in my cabin was my father.”

He couldn’t speak. He held her gaze as he moved into the suite. “What do you mean?”

“The first John Doe. He’s my father.” Heat flushed her face. “He was alive all those years and never
contacted
me!
”

Chris put his hands on her shoulders, looking into her brown eyes. “Tell me how you know this.” He didn’t doubt she believed it. Every ounce of her energy hummed with the truth of her words.

She exhaled. “I had a private lab run an immediate DNA comparison between the two of us. It cost me an arm and a leg and Lacey Campbell called in a big favor at the lab, but I needed to know. The results came back and it’s him. I knew it.”

“You never said a thing. At the medical examiner’s you said you had no idea who it was.”

“I didn’t, but something about seeing Uncle Saul put the idea in my brain. I hadn’t seen him in quite a while and for the first time I noticed how much he’d aged recently. It made me wonder what my father would have looked like. Suddenly I
knew
.”

“Why did you keep it to yourself? You could have mentioned it to Detective Hawes or me.”

She laughed harshly. “Don’t you see how ridiculous that would sound? ‘I think this is my long-dead father.’ Everyone would have thought I was hanging on to childhood delusions.” She put her hands over her eyes. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

He pulled her to him, trying to stop the shudders he felt shooting through her body. “You’re not crazy. You’re sure about the lab work?”

“Absolutely.”

“Someone had to know he was still alive.”

“I think Uncle Saul knew,” she whispered into his chest. “He must have known.”

“And never told you? Why would he keep that a secret? How could a father go all these years without getting in touch with you?”

“I was about to go ask him those questions.” She pulled back and lifted her gaze to his. “Will you go with me?”

Her red eyes didn’t plead with him. This was her battle and she was fully prepared to face her uncle on her own. But she’d asked, and he wanted to be there for her.

“Yes.”

Uncle Saul seemed to shrink in his chair.

“It’s true?” Gianna asked. “You’ve known all this time and didn’t tell me?” On the way to Saul’s suite she’d nearly convinced herself that he hadn’t known about her father. She’d started to believe that her father had hidden from everyone, but when she told her uncle about the DNA tests, she knew by his face that he’d lied to her for most of her life.

“That was him?” Saul’s voice cracked. “Richard was killed in that fire?”

“He was shot first,” Chris pointed out. “What in the hell was he doing there?”

“I don’t know,” said Saul.

“I don’t believe you!” Gianna shouted. “How could you lie to me for years and years? You lied to a child about her parents! Is my mother alive, too?”

Saul shook his head. “No, she was killed in the car accident.”

“That’s what you said about both my parents! I don’t know what to believe now!”
Aware her legs were about to let her down, Gianna dropped into a chair across from Saul. She wanted to scream at her uncle and then crawl into his lap as if she were a child again. She gripped her hands in her lap; she wanted to pummel her uncle as hard as she could and then hug him and beg him to tell her that it wasn’t true. Chris’s hand squeezed her shoulder. Not a pansy-assed, gentle squeeze like he’d give to a damsel in distress. It was a painful grip; he was pissed.

“Start talking,” he said to Saul. “Start at the beginning. You knew it could have been Richard who died when the medallion was revealed, didn’t you?”

Gianna froze.
Did Saul know yesterday?

“No!” Saul said. “I never connected the medallion with Richard. I didn’t know he had it. I assumed it would be found in one of the storage units with their things.”

His eyes pleaded with Gianna. “It never occurred to me. I figured Richard had vanished into Mexico again. I’m as shocked as you that he was here.”

She wanted to believe him.

Saul sighed. “I need a drink.” He stood and walked over to the wet bar in the suite. “Anyone else?”

Gianna was strongly tempted. “No. Is Owen here?” She didn’t want him intruding on something so personal. While they’d dated, she’d never discussed her parents with him, and she wasn’t about to start now.

Glass clinked behind the bar. “No. He isn’t staying here. He has his own room.” He met Gianna’s gaze. “Do you want him here for this?”

“Lord, no.”

“What happened to Gianna’s parents?” Chris asked.

Saul looked at Chris. “Do you want something to drink? You might as well pull up a chair, son.”

“No, thank you.” Chris grabbed a chair from the dining set and set it close to Gianna’s. She suspected he’d bitten back a retort to Saul’s “son” comment. That was Chris. Polite. But extremely direct.

Saul sat down and looked at Gianna. His face sagged, and he appeared to have aged ten years since he’d opened his suite’s door. “I love you, you know. You couldn’t be my daughter any more than if I’d fathered you myself.” His gaze was sincere.

“I love you, too,” she said from between clenched teeth. “But right now I want to hit something. And cry. I might do both.”

Saul took a drink and stared into his glass, swirling the ice in the alcohol. “Your parents wanted the best for you. My brother Richard was a fucking genius when it came to electronics.”

“I know.” She did know. Even before her parents died . . . disappeared . . . she’d been constantly told how smart her father was.

“He was a straight arrow. He couldn’t tell a lie to save his soul.”

Gianna made a choking sound, pain welling up in her chest. “You’re killing me, Saul.”

“He nearly died in that car accident, Gianna. He should have died. Instead he carried you for some of those miles to that house for help.”

Truth.
All the dreams about someone helping her in the dark had been true. And it hadn’t been her uncle; it’d been her father.

“He did?” Her voice cracked.

“Yes,” said Saul simply.

“But the man at that house said Gianna was alone,” interjected Chris. Gianna glanced at him; his focus was on her uncle, but she wondered if he’d researched her past, as Violet had read up on his.

“Richard essentially left her on the doorstep,” agreed Saul.

“Why?”
begged Gianna.
Why would my father abandon me?

“He was protecting you the only way he knew how. They’d killed his wife and nearly killed him and you. Even with a severe head injury, he’d managed to do what he thought was right at the time.”

“A head injury?” Gianna thought hard, remembering the blood on her hands from that long walk in the night. Had some of it been her father’s? She’d had her own lacerations and blow to the head, which doctors referenced to explain away her odd recollections and the gaps in her memory.

“Are you saying the family was targeted?” asked Chris. “That the car accident wasn’t an accident?”

“That’s exactly what we believe happened.”

“We?” asked Gianna.

“Yes, your father and I.” Saul held her gaze. “I’m sorry, honey. But your father got mixed up with some very bad people.”

“Who?” Chris asked sharply. “Who would try to kill a family?”

Chris’s face was calm, but Gianna knew this revelation must have brought an overwhelming rush of memories and stress. He’d hid behind a false identity for years to protect his family from a killer. No one knew evil better than Chris.

“None of what I’m about to tell you has been proven. These are deductions your father and I came to over the years.” Saul reached over and touched Gianna’s knee. “Everything we did was out of love for you. It was for your own protection.”

She couldn’t move. His words didn’t comfort. She saw her uncle’s fingers on her knee, but she couldn’t feel them. She’d shut down her peripheral nerves as she tried to keep her head above the sucking black water of confusion and lies. All of her energy focused on staying upright in the chair and not screaming. She didn’t want to hear about love; she wanted to know
why
.

“Your father and his partner Leo Berg were making big strides in cordless technology in the early eighties with Berssina Tech and competing with the big guys on certain levels in the industry. Your father called it ‘a race to build a better mouse.’”

“They sold their cordless mouse technology to one of the biggest computer hardware developers of the times,” Gianna said for Chris’s benefit. “It was an enormous deal for Berssina Tech. It was the cornerstone that funded all their other technologies. If it hadn’t happened, I don’t know if the business would have survived, let alone have paid Leo and me all these years.”

“Did Berssina make other big strides in technology?” Chris asked.

“Not like that one,” answered Saul. “Gianna’s father was the engineer and Leo was the business side. Once Richard was gone, there never was another brain quite like his.”

“Who were the people Richard shouldn’t have gotten involved with?” Chris asked.

“Leo had been approached by a South African company who wanted to invest in Berssina. Richard had a problem with this company’s politics and refused to agree to accept their money, but Leo felt that money was money.”